Heredity. 155 



modifications. (2) No one doubts that functional and 

 environmental variations often reappear. Many doubt, 

 however, that they reappear because they have been 

 transmitted. Another alternative is obviously open. 

 The conditions which originally brought about a given 

 change may still persist, and may. hammer the same 

 effect upon the offspring which they wrought upon the 

 parent. 



Doubt as to the transmission of acquired characters is 

 certainly not novel, though Weismann has the credit of 

 crystallizing out the scepticism. Brock has noticed that 

 the editor, whoever he was, of Aristotle's Historia Ani- 

 malium seems to have differed from his master on this 

 subject. Aristotle had referred to the inheritance of the 

 exact shape of a cautery mark ; but the editor insinuated 

 a doubt as to apparent instances of this sort. 



In modern times Kant was one of the first to express 

 a firm disbelief in the transmission of individual pecu- 

 liarities, and Bonnet was of the same opinion, but neither 

 seems to have defined exactly what they intended to 

 exclude from inheritance. 



James Cowles Prichard (b. 1786), a well-known an- 

 thropologist, anticipated as early as 1826 some of the 

 characteristically modern views on evolution. His im- 

 portance has been recently expounded by Prof. E. B. 

 Poulton. In the second edition of his Researches into 

 the Physical History of Mankind (1826) Prichard stated 

 the case in favour of organic evolution, recognized the 

 operation of natural and artificial selection, and not only 

 drew a clear distinction between acquired and congeni- 

 tal characters, but argued that the former were not 

 transmitted. He was not rigidly consistent, and his 

 convictions seem to have weakened in after years, but 

 his anticipation of one of Weismann's positions by more 

 than half a century is remarkable. 



Galton preceded Weismann not only in abandoning 

 the Lamarckian position, but also in outlining the con- 

 ception of germinal continuity. Galton had been led to 

 doubt the transmission of acquired modifications, partly 

 on general grounds and partly because his experiments 

 on the transfusion of blood in rabbits had forced him 



